Southern Avenger

A Tale of Two Rights - William F. Buckley and the Damage Done

"The prominence of the Old Right continued until about the mid-1950s with the founding of National Review by William F. Buckley. While Old Right thinkers like Kirk, Richard Weaver, Ludwig Von Mises, and others dominated the fast-rising conservative journal, with success came corruption. In 1956, Buckley declared in a famous commentary that conservatives should accept big government, military expansion, and the modern state inherited from Roosevelt and others in order to defeat the Soviet Empire. Once that objective was accomplished, conservatives could return to the business of dismantling government, promoting and preserving American culture, and fidelity to the Constitution.

This was not a hard sell to make to the Beltway and Manhattan-based conservatives hungry for respectability, and many were quick to follow Buckley's lead as they happily embraced what Old Right libertarian Murray Rothbard called the "welfare-warfare" state.

Today, prominent paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul often seem like odd men out on the right, simply because they have kept the faith and insist on pursuing conservatism's original mission. Buckley, a man with Old Right roots who should have known better, allowed the movement that he changed more than anyone to change him."